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RCMP called ‘anti-petroleum’ critics a potential security threat

The RCMP had identified “anti-petroleum” critics as a potential security threat, according to a threat assessment dated January 2014.

An RCMP document casts climate change activists as outside mainstream Canadian public opinion, and points to criminal acts between 2006 and 2013, particularly the anti-fracking protests in New Brunswick that turned violent. (Andrew Vaughan / THE CANADIAN PRESS file photo)

OTTAWA—The RCMP has identified “anti-petroleum” critics as a potential security threat, fuelling concerns in Parliament that tough new anti-terror powers will be misused to target environmentalists, aboriginals and critics of the government’s economic agenda.

Obtained by La Presse newspaper, the RCMP document casts climate change activists as outside mainstream Canadian public opinion, and points to handful of criminal acts between 2006 and 2013, particularly the anti-fracking protests in New Brunswick that turned violent.

It predicts as pipeline and hydraulic fracturing operations expand across Canada “criminal activity associated to the anti-petroleum movement will increase nationally” and calls such extremists “a realistic criminal threat.”

Bill C-51, the proposed Anti-Terrorism Act of 2015, would enact sweeping new spying and intervention powers for CSIS and the RCMP to target security threats. It would allow easier sharing of intelligence information about individuals among 17 federal agencies and departments, and would criminalize individuals who “promote” terrorism.

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On Wednesday the NDP and Green Party pushed the Harper government on just who the bill is targeting.

“Bill C-51 would expand CSIS’s mandate to spying on ‘interference with infrastructure and interference with economic or financial stability,’ ” said NDP Leader Tom Mulcair.

“The language is so broad that it would allow CSIS to investigate anyone who challenges the government’s social, economic or environmental policies. What is to stop this bill from being used to spy on the government’s political enemy?”

Prime Minister Stephen Harper mocked Mulcair, saying, “We knew that with the NDP it would be only a matter of a couple of weeks before we got into this kind of conspiracy theory. That is what we have come to expect from the black helicopter fleet over there.”

“Of course the reality is that under the legislation, based on information about imminent terrorist activity in Canada, should CSIS find it necessary to disrupt that, of course it would have to go to a court to get court sanction for those actions.”

Mulcair retorted that “the problem is that it’s the prime minister who sees enemies everywhere.”

Public Safety Minister Steven Blaney said the bill aims at “any activity that undermines the security of Canada (which) does not include lawful advocacy, protests, dissent and artistic expression.”

However, University of Ottawa law professor Craig Forcese and the University of Toronto’s Kent Roach have conducted a lengthy analysis of the bill and concluded it is overbroad in many aspects, including by potentially capturing protests that don’t have proper municipal permits for example.

Green Party Leader Elizabeth May asked Harper whether the bill would cover activities “that are by definition not lawful but that are peaceful, such as when Conservative MPs refuse to fill out the long gun registry, or when Green Party members blockade Kinder Morgan pipelines. Will non-violent, peaceful activities be exempted from this act?”

Harper said it is “very well known that the anti-terrorism act, 2015, is designed to deal with the promotion and actual execution of terrorist activities, and not other lawful activities.”

Keith Stewart, of Greenpeace, posted a response on the organization’s website saying the document displays “the kind of poor judgment that needs to be limited when it defines individuals advocating purely peaceful actions such as sit-ins as a threat to national security.”

He said while the terrorism bill has an exemption for lawful protest and dissent, “there are, however, many forms of protest that aren’t strictly lawful such as a rally that doesn’t get the proper permits, wildcat strikes, sit-ins, or Idle No More blockades set up by First Nations to defend their treaty rights.”

“We already have laws to address these types of actions, so undertaking or supporting such actions should not be conflated with terrorism, nor should it enable the kind of surveillance and interference contained in the proposed terrorism bill.

“In fact, you don’t even have to actually organize a demonstration or sit-in to trigger the new power — under this legislation CSIS simply has to suspect that you might do something that interferes with critical infrastructure and they can break out their new bag of tricks. Which is truly chilling. And that may be the desired effect.”

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